


Not a Fan

by Skye_Maxwell



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Akechi's food blog, Beef Bowl Shop is the place for you, Fans, Hypocrisy, I am thou, Internal Conflict, M/M, Respect the Pancake Boy, Secret Crush, Social Media, Sunsets, Thou art I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 15:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16789591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skye_Maxwell/pseuds/Skye_Maxwell
Summary: Walking amongst the usual throng in Shibuya, Akechi opened his phone, trying to see why it had been blowing up for the past few hours while he was trying to get some actual work done. He scrolled through his feed, seeing that his followers were engaged in a heated conversation about what might be going on with him since he hadn’t posted anything in days.Who thefuckdid these people think they were?





	Not a Fan

Walking amongst the usual throng in Shibuya, Akechi opened his phone, trying to see why it had been blowing up for the past few hours while he was trying to get some actual work done. He scrolled through his feed, seeing that his followers were engaged in a heated conversation about what might be going on with him since he hadn’t posted anything in days.

Someone had gone so far as to calculate his average time between posts, and apparently he was officially well over his average. There were even some fans who had decided to band together and send him direct messages across all his social media to question his status.

Who the _fuck_ did these people think they were?

Fake.

It was all so fake.

No one knew a damn thing about him, least of all these anonymous fuckers on the internet who had nothing better to do with their sorry lives than stalk him.

Akechi felt the resentment starting to boil over, so before he got angry enough to throw the phone down and let it shatter against the street, he put the phone on silent and pocketed it. The middle of Shibuya was no place to have a meltdown.

He had wanted fame, sure, but it had merely been a distant concept at first. He hadn’t even really thought about his ‘demographic’ beforehand—the hordes of brainless young girls who would fawn over his looks and charm. For now he was forced to play into it, but the longer he had to do so, the more he was disgusted with what made him popular.

He didn’t want to be drooled over or mindlessly idolized; he wanted to be respected. And he didn’t want to be respected by just anyone; he wanted the respect of people who were on his own level, or at least not so far from it as his average so-called ‘fan.’ He wanted his intellect, maturity, and maybe even his cunning to be fully appreciated for what they were.

Akechi stopped walking, trying to not be too noticeable as he took a few measured breaths in and out. He told himself he could just post something tonight, and his fans’ theatrics would stop. This stage of his celebrity was just a phase, and his patience would pay off in the end.

People shuffled unthinkingly around him as he stared at his shoes, allowing the tension to build up high in his shoulders before finally releasing it and looking up.

His gaze traveled straight down Central Street, over the heads of the crowd and through the tall buildings in the distance, and it was greeted by a lovely sunset that he would have otherwise missed.

Something inside him thawed ever-so-slightly, and he continued to stare for longer than he normally would have.

“Akechi.”

The soft voice shook him from his reverie.

“Just admiring the sunset,” Akechi felt the need to explain. “How are you, Kurusu?” he asked politely before turning to look at Akira, who was looking intently at his phone. “Kurusu?”

Akira didn’t answer.

“Don’t tell me you’re the type who can’t put his phone down for a moment to admire something beautiful?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Akira said, putting his phone away and then looking up toward the sunset. “It _is_ beautiful. I can see why you stopped.”

Akechi studied his face and then asked, “Are you just getting off of work?”

“How can you tell?”

Akechi pointed out, “You smell like beef bowl.”

Akira took a large step back from Akechi. “Sorry.”

“Ah, I didn’t mean it as a negative. After all, who doesn’t like the smell of beef bowl?”

Akira stepped closer to Akechi again, retracting the distance he’d put between them.

Akechi asked, “Are you headed to Leblanc now?”

Akira nodded. “You?”

“I was thinking of heading there as well.”

Then Akira’s stomach rumbled audibly, actually making him blush a little.

Feeling gracious, Akechi asked, “Would you like to get a crepe with me? I need to make a post for my blog. My treat, since I’m slowing you down.”

“Okay.”

Once they got their overstuffed crepes, they found a place to sit, and Akechi set to work on crafting a good picture to shut his fans up.

Before he would have been embarrassed to do such a thing in front of Akira, but all of the Phantom Thieves had long since found his blog (and some had made fun of it mercilessly), so there was no point in trying to hide it. Akira didn’t even appear to care, devoting his attention to his crepe.

After a couple attempts, Akechi was pretty satisfied with his photo.

“How about this one?” he asked Akira, but he didn’t really expect much of an answer. Akechi knew the angle was good, it was perfectly framed, and his expression was just happy enough to get his stupid followers’ approval.

Akira lowered his crepe to scrutinize the photo and then said shortly, “Not a fan.”

Akechi smiled brightly despite himself.

“I appreciate your honest opinion, Kurusu, but I’m going to post it anyways.”

“I like this one better,” Akira said out of nowhere, opening his photo app and tilting his phone toward Akechi.

Seeing his own profile on Akira’s screen, Akechi nearly squeezed the filling out of his crepe.

He was almost mortified that he had been so absorbed in looking at the sunset earlier that he hadn’t noticed Akira taking the photo of him.

“Why did you take this?”

Casual as ever, Akira replied, “Needed a contact photo.”

The only sensible option at the moment was to accept that answer, so Akechi silently leaned back in his seat, watching as Akira closed the photo and then set his phone screen-down on the table. He moved his gaze to nothing in particular and absentmindedly began to eat his crepe, his mind wandering far away from where it had been before that photo was taken.

When he came back to himself, he looked down at his crepe and saw that he had only eaten about a quarter of it. He looked to Akira, who had long since finished his crepe and was people-watching, his eyes moving back and forth behind his glasses.

“It seems I don’t have much of an appetite at the moment,” Akechi said regretfully.

“I’ll finish it.”

Akira reached for the crepe, and Akechi hesitantly handed it over, not because he wanted it or anything, but because he was surprised that Akira would eat after him.

Then again, Akechi thought as he watched Akira, the other boy had a somewhat frightening appetite and would probably eat anything offered to him without question.

Akechi returned to his phone, looking at the photo he’d taken of himself with disdain. He had the fleeting idea to ask Akira to send him the other photo so he could post that instead, but he quickly decided that he didn’t want to give that part of himself to the general public. It was too honest, too uncalculated. They didn’t deserve that.

He slapped a caption on his photo that included an apology for not posting as much lately due to his busy schedule, and then he posted it, closing the app immediately afterwards.

He looked at Akira, who was just finishing off the remainder of the crepe.

Genuinely amazed at how fast Akira could eat, Akechi said, “Your appetite is… unfathomable.”

“Yeah, it’s best to not try and fathom it,” Akira said, running his tongue over his teeth behind his lips before releasing a small smile. “Ready to go home now?”

“To Leblanc, you mean?”

“Yeah. To Leblanc.”

“Yes, let’s get going.”

* * *

(Akira’s POV)

Akechi had left a little while ago, and Akira had closed up the café behind him. Akira now sat on his bed, finally releasing a deep sigh that he had been holding in ever since he spotted Akechi on Central Street that afternoon.

Working at the beef bowl shop had always given Akira the worst hat hair, and as soon as he had decided he was definitely going to approach Akechi, he frantically ran his fingers through his hair over and over again to try and make it not look so awful. He’d given up soon enough though, realizing the stubbornness of his hair would not be so easily overcome.

His overall attempt to appear cool in front of Akechi was further thwarted when Akechi informed him that he basically smelled like old meat, and then his stomach growled so loudly he was surprised it didn’t crack the pavement beneath their feet. Akechi had gracefully navigated both occurrences, which Akira had mixed feelings about.

On the plus side, he _had_ gotten one genuine smile out of Akechi today, but unfortunately after that, Akechi seemed to be on guard against letting another one slip. Still, Akira had the memory of that one rare smile to hold onto for now.

Morgana was already asleep on the bed, and Akira reached over to pet him idly while checking his phone one last time before going to sleep himself. He pulled up Akechi’s latest post, seeing that the number of likes and comments had tripled since the last time he had checked.

The comments section pissed Akira off. The comments ranged from encouraging and positive to rude and downright creepy.

One asshole—some middle-aged man—was calling Akechi a ‘wannabe detective’ and an ‘attention whore’ and saying he wished ‘that kid would fuck off already.’

Akira found himself wishing he could see the man’s real name instead of just a username. Surely cyber-bullying was enough to land someone in Mementos? Maybe he could get Futaba to track the guy down.

A whole thread of comments had sprung up defending Akechi and even threatening the man, but the way they did it was so _possessive_. And the ironic thing was that they were possessive over someone they didn’t actually know at all. They thought Akechi was this perfect, poised prince, but Akira knew Akechi was a fucking mess who was always a second away from losing his shit. He was the kind of guy who, for example, might have to stop walking in the middle of a crowd in Shibuya just to take a few deep breaths to calm himself down.

But he was also the kind of guy who could get lost in a sunset in the most honest and childlike way—so lost that he wouldn’t notice someone standing in his peripheral and snapping a photo of him. He was the kind of guy who wanted to share something pretty he found with the closest person who would listen and then would protest if that person’s attention was divided for even a second.

Then Akira had a brilliant idea that he wished he’d had a few hours sooner. He should have stolen Akechi’s phone and taken a selfie while eating Akechi’s crepe, with Akechi in the background looking flustered as he tried to find a polite way to demand his phone back. He should have posted that they were on a date and that Akechi hadn’t been posting lately because he was too busy with his dashing criminal boyfriend. Then at least maybe some of Akechi’s female followers would be put off by the Detective Prince being gay, and taken.

Akira had to laugh at the wildness of his own thought process and ultimately, his own hypocrisy.

_Who’s being possessive now?_

Akira scrolled back up to the photo again.

Fake.

So fucking fake.

A text came in, and a different photo of Akechi was suddenly on Akira’s screen—the photo he had set as Akechi’s contact photo just as soon as he took it.

The text read: “Thank you for spending time with me tonight.”

Akira’s fingers twitched a bit as dumb replies started flying through his mind.

_Anything for you, Honey._

_Want me to kill all the assholes who are bothering you?_

_I’m down for a second date whenever you are._

_I really liked eating your crepe because before my mouth touched it, your mouth touched it, and I am a smitten fucking child._

_Please text me when you get home safely._

_Goro, I…_

Akira shook his head and quickly typed, “You’re welcome.”

Akira grimaced at the dispassionate response as soon as he sent it.

Fake.

So fake.

**Author's Note:**

> I did the thing where I put the musics on shuffle and see what happens. This happened. “You Don’t Know Me” by Ariana Grande was the inspiration. Don’t harass celebrities. Or anyone, really. Have a nice day!


End file.
